Law Commons^™

The Good, The Right, And The Lawyer, Trevor C. W. Farrow

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Access To Justice? The View From The Street, Mary Stratton

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

Once homeless, our odds for accessing any kind of justice are low. Whether we are chronically or just periodically homeless, we will be familiar with social injustice. The likelihood is high that we also have unresolved legal problems spanning multiple areas of law. Seventeen participants in the Alberta Legal Services Mapping Project (ALSMP) reported being currently homeless. Their experiences, joined with reports from legal and social service providers across Alberta, are the focus of this article.

Alberta Legal Services Mapping Project: An Overview Of Findings From The Eleven Judicial Districts, Mary Stratton

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

The Alberta Legal Services Mapping Project (ALSMP) was a large-scale, collaborative research initiative designed to increase understanding of the legal needs of Albertans, the extent to which these needs are currently being met, and how access to legal services can be improved. It was the most comprehensive „mapping‟ research1 so far undertaken in Canada and collected an unprecedented breadth and depth of information about legal programs and services in Alberta, the demands on those services and identified legal needs that are not yet being met. The data also captured local social contexts and identified current strengths as well as gaps …

One Right Answer?: The Meta Edition, Dan Priel

All Papers

Legal philosophers concerned with the nature of law have focused much of their attention to the relationships between law and morality. Much less attention has been paid to the question of the relationship between law and politics. In this essay I examine this question by comparing the way the relationship between law and politics is understood in two legal systems usually thought to be fairly similar - the American and the British. I argue, first, that this relationship is understood in fundamentally different ways in the two legal systems; second, that this difference is reflected in the legal philosophers of …

The Alberta Legal Services Mapping Project: Report For The Peace River Judicial District, Glynnis Lieb

Canadian Forum on Civil Justice

The Peace River Judicial District is the final of eleven Alberta Judicial Districts to be mapped as part of the Alberta Legal Services Mapping Project (ALSMP). The ALSMP is a large-scale, multi-year endeavour, designed to gain an understanding of the legal needs of Albertans and of the legal services available in Alberta.

Restricted Access To Justice For Canadians Mistreated Abroad: Abdelrazik V. Canada (Re: Interim Costs), Sean Rehaag

All Papers

Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen who, after having his name added to various anti-terrorism lists, and after being tortured by Sudanese officials, found himself unable to return home from Sudan largely because of Canadian government actions. Abdelrazik sought to challenge the constitutionality of these restrictions on his ability to return to Canada. However, he had no money and no means of support, as he was unable to leave a Canadian embassy in Sudan where he had sought refuge to avoid further torture by Sudanese officials. He therefore brought a motion for interim costs in Canada’s Federal Court. If granted, …

Let's Disable Her Further, Shall We? The Cast Of Gender On Disability Rights In The Iranian Context, Hengameh Saberi

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Desert And Avoidability In Self-Defence, François Tanguay-Renaud

Articles & Book Chapters

Jeff McMahan rejects the relevance of desert to the morality of self-defense. In Killing in War he restates his rejection and adds to his reasons. We argue that the reasons are not decisive and that the rejection calls for further attention, which we provide. Although we end up agreeing with McMahan that the limits of morally acceptable self-defense are not determined by anyone’s deserts, we try to show that deserts may have some subsidiary roles in the morality of self-defense. We suggest that recognizing this might help McMahan to answer some unanswered questions to which his own position gives rise.

The Transnationalization Of Truth: A Meditation On Sri Lanka And Honduras, Craig Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

The present article is an elaboration of the text prepared for a lecture, delivered in London, England, on Tuesday, October 19, 2010, as part of the Centre for Transnational Legal Studies’ annual Transnational Justice Lecture series. The paper begins, in Section II, with general comments on a notion of “interactive diversity of knowledge” and how that connects up to a view about the nature of truth. Sections III and IV then present salient aspects of events in both Honduras and Sri Lanka over the last two years, with the coup d’ état of 28 June 2009, in Honduras and the …

Access To Digital Legal Information: Focus On The English-Speaking Caribbean Countries, Yemisi Dina

Articles & Book Chapters

The Internet and various digitization initiatives have opened up immediate access to legal materials such as statutes, bills, law reports etc. through government websites and the Legal Information Institutes. There is a dearth in the legal information that is free and openly accessible for countries in the English-speaking Caribbean even though there has been relative progress in the last ten years. A number of these countries have Freedom of Information or Access to Information legislation which requires that government must make information openly accessible to its citizens. This paper reviews developments and government efforts in providing free and accessible legal …

Sites Of Exclusion: Disabled Women’S Sexual And Reproductive Rights, Roxanne Mykitiuk, Ena Chadha

Articles & Book Chapters

“Women with disabilities commonly find themselves precluded from performing the major life functions commonly assigned to women”. This is nowhere more true than in the areas of sexuality, reproduction and parenting. While women generally are identified with, and indeed valorized for, their nurturing roles, sexual attractiveness and reproductive capacities, women with disabilities are all too often regarded as lacking in each case. Disability affects whether and how women are permitted to participate in sexual, reproductive and nurturing activities. In a culture where women are still defined, to a significant extent, as sexual beings, reproducers and nurturers, the, “general culture limits …

The Meaning Of 'Sphere Of Influence' In Iso 26000, Stepan Wood

Articles & Book Chapters

The relationship between a company’s influence and its social responsibilities is the subject of persistent controversy, manifested for example in the debate over the use of the concept of “sphere of influence” (SOI) to define the scope of a company’s social responsibility. Early drafts of the ISO 26000 guide on social responsibility employed SOI in this way, stating among other things that influence can give rise to responsibility and that generally, the greater the ability to influence, the greater the responsibility. The UN Special Representative on business and human rights, John Ruggie, rejected this use of SOI as ambiguous, misleading, …

Risky Pregnancy: Liability, Blame, And Insurance In The Governance Of Prenatal Harm, Roxanne Mykitiuk, Dayna Nadine Scott

Articles & Book Chapters

Feminist theory has exposed the body of the pregnant woman as one that is continuously made into the object of analysis and regulation, and feminist scholars have sought to understand the evolving contestation over the boundary between the woman and the fetus: the life sometimes conceptualized as part of her and other times as carried with her. Together, they are "not-one-but-not-two". "Always marked by race, class and ability" as Johnson notes, "the pregnant body is sometimes celebrated, sometimes reviled", and, as we will argue, always judged.

Reflections On The U.K. Tribunal Reform: A Canadian Perspective, Lorne Sossin

Articles & Book Chapters

I have been following the United Kingdom reforms with interest, and in particular, the journey Lord Justice Carnwath has been pursuing with the Tribunal community in the United Kingdom (UK). The establishment of a unified Tribunals system arose out of a desire to bring tribunals more expressly under the umbrella of the justice system in order to better serve parties coming before those tribunals. The rationales for the UK reform were set out in a 2001 review conducted by Sir Andrew Leggett -- “Tribunals for Users -- One system One Service.”I would like to offer a Canadian perspective on the …

Three Recent Works On Contractual Interpretation [Part 1], John D. Mccamus

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Introduction To "New Governance And The Business Organization" Special Issue Of Law And Policy, Cristie Ford, Mary Condon

Articles & Book Chapters

The point of departure for this exciting collection of articles is to advance the scholarly treatment of “new governance” by shifting its focus away from what regulators do or how they do it, and towards examining the encounter between new governance and business organizations, within those organizations themselves. As is evident from this issue, this shift still provides a broad canvas on which to work, as the types of business activity examined here through the lens of new governance encompass railways, food safety, corporate privacy, and bank lending, as well as securities and derivatives trading. A particular strength of the …

Regulating Social Media Use In The Workplace, Yemisi Dina

Editorials and Commentaries

The advent of social networking sites (SNS) has become a reality of the digital age. These sites are highly interactive, creative and addictive for individuals to exchange personal, professional and social ideas but its use has also been the subject of litigation in the courts lately just like any man made invention. People using these sites have sparked a number of legal challenges that have dramatically changed the world. This raises a number of questions as to whether there are clear guidelines on the use of these tools by employers and employees.

This paper is a case commentary of one …

Key Theoretical Issues In The Interaction Of Law And Religion: A Guide For The Perplexed, Benjamin Berger

Articles & Book Chapters

There is perhaps no more important access point into the key issues of modern political and legal theory than the questions raised by the interaction of law and religion in contemporary constitutional democracies. Of course, much classical political and moral theory was forged on the issue of the relationship between religious difference and state authority. John Locke’s work was directly influenced by this issue, writing as he did about the just configuration of state authority and moral difference in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War. Yet debates about the appropriate role of religion in public life and the challenges …

Constituciones Duraderas – Una Crítica Democrática (Enduring Constitutions – A Democratic Critique), Allan C. Hutchinson, Joel Colon-Rios

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper argues that formal constitutions and their institutional paraphernalia do more to inhibit and mitigate the emancipatory potential of democracy than to nurture and realize it.

Spanish Abstract: La relación entre democracia y constituciones es larga y turbulenta. La tendencia de los que se inclinan hacia el lado constitucionalista ha sido la de percibir a la democracia como una amenaza al orden político y a la preservación de ciertos valores considerados importantes, mientras que los que adoptan una postura democrática, más que cualquier otra cosa, tienden a tratar a las constituciones como un obstáculo a la participación popular. En …

Feminist Legal Theory As Embodied Justice, Roxanne Mykitiuk, Isabel Karpin

Articles & Book Chapters

This chapter examines a shift within feminist legal theory from a central concern with sexual difference to one of embodied difference. The subject at the center of this theorizing is marked by bodily (as opposed to sexual) difference from the normative, self-actualizing individual of legal subjecthood. Bioethical and biotechnological inquiries too are concerned with bodily differentiation. Bodies discussed in these contexts are often anomalous or pathologized. They are brought under scrutiny, when they deviate from what is often regarded as "normal," that which is both valorized for its "species typicality" and, by extension, held out as the "natural" state of …

Calculations Of Conscience: The Costs And Benefits Of Religious And Conscientious Freedom, Howard Kislowicz, Richard Haigh, Adrienne Ng

Articles & Book Chapters

This article examines the Supreme Court of Canada’s cost-benefit analysis of freedom of conscience and religion guaranteed by s. 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony. The article finds that while the Supreme Court’s reasoning was ultimately flawed, its use of cost-benefit analysis may be a positive development in the freedom of religion framework. The article also looks at the Court’s treatment of the freedom of conscience guarantee in relation to freedom of religion. The article suggests that this treatment may foreshadow a more uniform approach to the broader …

Snooping, Privacy And Precedent In Ontario, David Vaver

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Place Of Legitimacy In Legal Theory, Dan Priel

Articles & Book Chapters

In this essay I argue that in order to understand debates in jurisprudence one needs to distinguish clearly between four concepts: validity, content, normativity, and legitimacy. I show that this distinction helps us, first, make sense of fundamental debates in jurisprudence between legal positivists and Dworkin: these should not be understood, as they often are, as debates on the conditions of validity, but rather as debates on the right way of understanding the relationship between these four concepts. I then use this distinction between the four concepts to criticize legal positivism. The positivist account begins with an attempt to explain …